Antique Furniture

Identifying period furniture becomes somewhat easier if you remember that furniture is subject to the same laws of gradual change and development that we find in everything else, one type merging almost imperceptibly into another. In almost every instance there are numerous cases of overlapping between consecutive periods.

It is by FORM that we most quickly recognize things, and even a novice, by giving a little study to chronology and illustration, will find himself growing familiar with the shapes of each period so that soon the whole field will lie out simply before him as a well-marked map.

Styles that matured in periods in the periods where they are considered typical often will have begun their evolution towards the close of the preceding epoch.

Persistence in the types and forms far beyond periods in which they were representative, by duplicating old models, is evens more noticeable than cases of premature arrival.

This is naturally to be expected in country districts where local furniture makers and joiners, far removed from urban centers where new ideas were taking root, just went on copying the objects they had before them with little or no innovation. Oak settles of Cromwellian pattern were thus made during the reign of Queen Anne and even in that of George I.

This tendency to overlap in both directions need not disturb our classifications, however, as they are merely the exceptions that prove the well-established rule.